


the adventure that comes to us

by fardareismai



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: F/F, Loneliness, cliffhanger ending, early 20th century, life after Narnia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 00:52:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15231783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: Make your choice, adventurous strangerStrike the bell and bide the dangerOr wonder 'till it drives you madWhat would have followed if you hadC.S. Lewis didn't seem to like Susan very much, and I always thought that rather unfair.  Because the world needs another analysis of why Susan was not allowed to return to Narnia.





	the adventure that comes to us

Susan Pevensie met her own eyes in the mirror without hesitation. What had she to fear from the looking glass anyway? She'd been 28 once before, and already knew how the years settled on her bones.

Of course, she did look slightly different this time. The last time she'd looked in the mirror and seen this face, she'd been a horsewoman and an archer, a diplomat, a queen. Her hair had cascaded long down her back, beautifully glossy as can only be achieved when it is washed in the purest water drawn from the cleanest springs. Her skin had been the milky-pure only to be found in a world without air pollution.

And she hadn't had lipstick then.

As she looked at the tube in her hand, Susan remembered the first time she'd worn it. She'd been sixteen for three days, and knew that she would never see a world apart from her own again. She'd been feeling vulnerable and lonely and so terribly young, and had wanted to recapture, even for a moment, the queen she had once been.

For a moment, Susan hadn't recognized the face in the mirror. It wasn't the queen she'd been seeking, but neither was it the child that she had come to hate. It was someone new, and someone about whom Susan was rather curious.

Peter had seen it- dear Peter, on the cusp of 18 and feeling his second adulthood as keenly as a sword- and had pulled her aside to hiss angrily at her that she was a queen of Narnia, and she might try to act like it.

Susan's chin had gone up, and her eyes had narrowed. Queen of Narnia? Her?

For twenty years she had bent her clever brain to economics, strategy, and diplomacy to rule a land of magic, but also a land full of citizens who must be fed and kept safe, who needed justice and compassion.

Peter, with his warrior's heart, had looked beautiful and golden at the head of an army on parade, met wherever he went with applause.

Lucy was beautiful and kind, and she had gone to orphanages and hospitals, spoke to the individual Narnians and soothed their concerns. She was met wherever she went with flower petals and dancing.

Edmund was clever and thoughtful and sat at the head of the court, issuing justice and law, and was always met with the bows of deepest respect.

And so the rest seemed to fall to Susan- it had been she who had managed the administration of tax collection, trade and diplomacy with their near neighbors, execution of the law, and plans for the future.

She knew what was said of her among the citizens- that she loved nothing more than gold and beautiful dresses. That she spent all of her time flirting with the handsome princes and dukes of nearby kingdoms. That she was the least of the kings and queens of Narnia.

Susan had born up under the knowledge for she had known something even more important: the golden crown she wore was not a gift or a pleasure, but a responsibility, and she would do all she possibly could to be worthy of it.

Twenty years of leadership and love Susan had given to Narnia- her passion, her mind, and her youth- only to have it thrown back in her face for the tiniest infraction.

Five days before they had found the Lamppost again, Susan and Edmund had been on a diplomatic mission in a neighboring kingdom and Susan had shared the sweetest kiss of her life behind a horse barn with an inappropriate lover.

The day after they had arrived back at the palace of Cair Paravel, the four kings and queens of Narnia had hared off into the woods after a hart and had not returned for hundreds of years.

Susan didn't believe for a moment that they had been the masters of their own fate that day. For twenty years, the four rulers had never left the palace untended by at least one of them- it was the benefit of family rule. Had any of them fallen, Narnia would remain protected.

But on that day, Narnia had wished to expel them, and so it had, and Susan would never believe that it wasn't because of one sweet, wine-tasting, meadow grass-smelling kiss. Because the person she'd kissed had been named Regina, and not Reginald.

She'd been allowed back once, presented with the handsome form of the young Prince and offered the test: would she take him and Narnia again, or would she remain exactly who she was, no matter the loss.

Narnia hadn't wanted the queen she had been, and Susan didn't want to be the child she was, so why not try on a new identity, if the price was so low as a fresh gloss of lipstick or a pair of nylon stockings?

To Peter's continued horror, Susan had joined the nursing corps as the war in Korea ramped up.

"Isn't it what a  _queen_  would do?" she had asked, packing her bags the night before she left for training. "Her men are fighting, it is my duty to serve my troops."

"A queen  _leads_  troops," he'd said, "and you're not a queen here- they won't respect you the way they did… then. They'll touch you and say… you don't know what soldiers are like! And you insisting on wearing lipstick and curling your hair…"

That had been the living end. Susan had whirled around and planted herself in front of Peter- her heeled shoes giving her just enough height to glare straight into his eyes without having to look up more than the defiant tilt of her chin insisted.

"I don't know soldiers? Do you think that even as queen I didn't hear what they said about me? I didn't see how they looked at me? That I didn't know what they were thinking? How stupid do you think I am?"

"Susan," Peter had said, reaching out as though to grab her shoulder.

Susan slapped his hand away. " _Nobody_  touches me without my consent. No man, no soldier, not even  _High King Peter_." This last was spat like an insult.

It was the last thing she'd ever said to her eldest brother. He had not come to the train station as she had left for nursing school. Lucy had cried into her shoulder as she'd hugged her goodbye, but Edmund had been calmer and had whispered that Peter did love her, he just didn't understand. Edmund didn't either, but he at least tried.

After six months of training, Susan had been shipped to the Pacific with only a day's warning. She could have gone to see her family again, but she didn't. She'd gone to London with her new friends and had drunk too many cocktails and had danced most of the night with a dark-haired girl whose kisses had tasted of cigarettes and gin.

In Korea, Susan had been baptized in blood. She had seen death before, but not like this. The wars in Narnia seemed almost quaint- picturesque- as compared to the quantity of destruction being wrought on this land. Susan had lived through the Second World War, but her privilege had kept her separate from the death. She'd seen the battlefields in grainy film, but had never touched the blood.

This was different. There were no spells or potions to mend shattered bodies, to soothe broken minds, or to raise the dead. There were cotton bandages and penicillin and what they called "meatball surgery" where the ground meat of casualties were patted into some form that might hold until they could get somewhere with time and attention to spare. All too often, the wounds were barely healed before the boys were sent right back out to where they had come from, this time to come back out in caskets.

Every night, Susan scrubbed blood and shit from under her fingernails, brushed her hair 100 strokes, and rolled it in rags before she slept. Every morning she armed herself with bobby pins and her favorite red lipstick and resumed the battle against death and disease.

A year after she arrived, the telegram came. Peter, Edmund, and Lucy, as well as their godfather, Professor Diggory, had been in a massive train accident. They were gone.

She was discharged from the army in less than a week, citing family emergency.

_Family emergency_ … She didn't really think she qualified. She had learned that death was no emergency, only dying was. And she now had no family.

Her mother's house in town in which the four children had been living now belonged solely to her, and the professor's estate in the South had been left equally to the four children, now Susan alone.

She wanted none of it- no houses, no estates. She didn't even want England anymore. Susan set out a small army of solicitors and told them to discharge every one of her responsibilities, pay her debts with money from the sale of every stick of furniture, every acre of land, every iota of her own history, and any money that was left could be deposited in her bank account, then she stepped on a plane across the Atlantic to vanish into the miasma that is New York.

Two years later, stumbling to her apartment after having celebrated her twenty-eighth birthday in a bar in which the women kept their hair short and the men were the ones who wore lipstick, and the kisses had tasted of vodka and cocaine, she was confronted by an agitated doorman.

"Miss Pevensie," he said, clearly annoyed but deferential regardless- she'd had few debts and London townhouses and good farming estates were still remarkably valuable- "if you are going to have such large items delivered, please let us know in advance!"

"Delivered?" Susan asked, head still muddled with too much drink. "I'm not expecting any deliveries. Are you sure it is mine?"

The doorman gave her a sour look. "You are the only Susan Pevensie in the building, and the only resident I can imagine getting a package from England the size of an armoire."

Susan's head was already spinning, but now it felt as though it might spin straight out of control.

Not an armoire. A wardrobe. The Wardrobe.

Of course she wouldn't be able to get rid of it that easily.

"I don't want it," Susan blurted without thinking, though of course she knew what he would say.

"Whether you want it or not, you must take possession of it," the doorman said. "It cannot remain at my desk. Give it to the Salvation Army if you must, but get it out of here."

Susan sighed. "Is there anyone who can help me get it up to my room?" she asked, dejectedly.

She directed two members of the maintenance staff as they wrestled it up the stairs to her rooms and tipped them both a dollar as they left her sweating and panting.

In its packing case, it looked innocuous- as though it could be anything in the world. Susan knew though. What else could it possibly be?

"I should have had the horrible thing burned," she muttered to herself as she went searching through her rooms for a screwdriver.

It was huge and packed in sawdust, and on the top was a letter from Susan's family solicitors.

"Miss Pevensie," it read. "When we reviewed Professor Diggory's will, we found that this particular item could not be sold, it can only be passed down through the family. Since the house was sold and the new residents will be taking possession eminently, we have sent the item to you. You may do anything you like except sell it to someone outside of the family."

It closed with "respectfully" and the names of the four partners whose names made up the firm.

"'Someone outside the family,' eh?" Susan muttered. That was only literally every other person in the world, wasn't it? She'd be buried in the horrible thing, unless she did burn it or have it dropped into the Hudson.

She stared at the box, and the item inside which was completely obscured by the packing sawdust. It crossed her mind to walk away- lock the door behind her, hand her keys to the doorman, and never look back. She could get on an airplane and get as far away from the cursed thing as possible- they said California was nice.

Susan pushed herself off her knees and walked into her bath. She met her own eyes unflinchingly in the glass- what had she to fear from age? She'd been twenty-eight once before, and when she had, she'd been afraid of nothing.

She opened her tube of lipstick and frowned. It was nearly empty. She'd have to get more tomorrow or-

She stopped the train of thought. She refused to think about tomorrow. Instead, mind blank, she slicked the red color over her lips with the same care she would have used if she'd been about to step into the Broadway lights. She reached next for her mascara to brighten her eyes and make her lashes look terribly long and dark. She looked down to be sure that there was no run in her nylon stockings. Her shoes were high-heeled, but comfortable enough for her to dance in all night. Her dress was flattering and blue- the same shade of blue in which she had been crowned a Queen of Narnia once, a hundred years ago. The color made her dark hair and pale skin shine.

She met her eyes once more in the mirror and nodded then turned off the light in her bathroom and returned to her sitting area and the great wardrobe waiting like a ticking bomb.

Susan knelt beside it again and as gently as if it were an unexploded shell, she brushed the sawdust away from the front, exposing the great, intricate tree carving across the two doors.

She could feel the magic in it, just as she'd known she would. The wardrobe would not have re-entered her life by accident, and she could feel the bone-deep tingle that told her she was about to be ripped away once more from everything she knew- magic didn't settle in the skin, but deeper than that. You felt it in your bones.

"Honestly," Susan muttered. "It's enough to make one jealous of Alice. She at least always went to the same place, and they only kept her for a few days- not years and years. And she was always happy enough to go home, in the end."

She'd long-since stopped thinking of the fate that had brought her to Narnia and then kicked her out, had sent her to war, then taken her siblings away from her and left her alone as either Benevolent God, nor even Disinterested Clockmaker. She imagined it, instead, as a malevolent Author writing some sort of novel about pain and disenchantment.

"Enough stalling, Susan," she said sharply to herself. "Nothing difficult gets easier by procrastination."

She seized the door handle, swung it open, and stepped into the darkness in a single, smooth motion.


End file.
